CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted Thursday that Principal Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dispelled rumors of a rift between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump.
Sanders’s statement to Acosta and other reporters came after days of mainstream media promotion of rumors from unnamed White House sources that the Attorney General and the President have been at loggerheads and that Sessions had even offered his resignation. Acosta noted the over 48 hours that passed between the report and Sanders’s rebuke, the first official White House refutation of the idea that Sessions might be on his way out for having criticized the president.
The Daily Caller’s Alex Pfeiffer, however, reported Wednesday that multiple sources close to the Attorney General found the insinuation of his demise ridiculous. “He’s not going anywhere,” one official who spoke with Sessions in the aftermath of the reports told the Caller.
Much of the media speculation was based on Trump’s supposed disagreement with the Justice Department on litigation strategy in the upcoming Supreme Court appeal on the validity of the President’s executive order travel ban for six Muslim majority countries. The President made tweets defending the original ban over what he called the “watered-down” second version, which was drafted with closer supervision from Attorney General Sessions’s Justice Department.
Sessions, however, has been a prime media target within the administration since before he was even confirmed as Attorney General in contentious hearings that saw Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) make racially-charged attacks on then-Senator Sessions that saw her reprimanded. The campaign against Sessions, from both Democratic elected officials and the left-wing activist establishment, has only intensified since administration blood entered the water with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s ouster.
In March, Senate Democrats renewed their calls for Sessions to resign over his inaccurate statements about meeting with Russian officials in the course of his official business as a U.S. Senator. The drums beating for resignation were quickly joined by the Democratic National Committee and George Soros’s leftist agitation vehicle Moveon.org.
This week’s rumors of resignation began after a relative lull in the pressure from the left on Sessions. His central role in enforcing President Trump’s agenda on immigration and crime, however, continue to make him a focal point of leftist ire.
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